Credit card products have become so universally well known and ubiquitous that they have fundamentally changed the manner in which financial transactions and dealings are viewed and conducted in society today. Credit card products are most commonly represented by plastic card-like members that are offered and provided to consumers through credit card issuers (such as banks and other financial institutions). With a credit card, an authorized consumer is capable of purchasing services and/or merchandise without an immediate, direct exchange of cash. Instead, the customer incurs debt with each purchase. Thereafter, the customer repays the debt upon receipt of a periodic statement from the issuer. When using the credit card to make a purchase, the transaction is processed via a credit card clearinghouse or authorization system, such as the Visa or MasterCard networks.
In addition to credit cards, there are other financial account cards that function like credit cards, but that are associated with a bank account, like a checking account. Such cards are sometimes called check cards. Like credit card purchases, transactions made by using check cards are cleared through a credit card clearinghouse. Debit cards are another type of financial account cards. Debit cards are also ordinarily associated with a bank account of some type. A common type of debit card is the automated teller machine (“ATM”) type card. There are also other types of payment cards, such as stored value cards, smart cards, secured cards, where a customer may pay a security deposit before being given the ability to leverage the credit product, and prepaid credit products, where a credit balance is created via pre-payment and then utilized as point of sale locations.
Credit card issuers and other payment system operators collect a large amount of customer data, some of which is obtained from customers directly. To apply for a credit card, for example, an applicant typically must supply demographic data (e.g. age or city of residence), financial data (e.g., monthly expenses, income, or bank account balance), and employment data (e.g., salary or length of employment). To determine whether to issue a card to the applicant, an issuer may also contact a credit reporting agency to obtain the applicant's credit history.
Payment system operators also collect a great deal of data through the course of a purchase transaction. For example, when a customer makes a purchase, a payment system operator (which may also be the credit card issuer), obtains data about where the purchase was made (e.g., the store name and location), the purchase price, and potentially the item or items purchased. The data collected by the payment system operator is then used to generate billing statements and collect payment from customers.
To date, however, the customer and transaction data collected by the financial account issuer has not been used effectively to provide offers for additional products and services to the customer to encourage the customer to use the account more often. Furthermore, while previous issuer systems may have offered different products and services to a customer, these systems had many deficiencies. First, these offers typically came through standard mail in the form of a coupon or advertisement from the financial account issuer. Customers often discard such mailings because they are usually not timely (e.g., when the customer was actually shopping). Second, these offers are not tied to any customer data or purchase transaction data collected by the financial account issuer. The offers are thus generic to everyone, and not specific to the customer. Additionally, due to the latency between the time the offer is made and when the customer receives the offer, the customer's account status and/or needs may have changed. By the time the customer receives the offer, the customer may have exceeded the credit limit and may no longer be eligible for that offer. Therefore, financial services companies are limited in the products they offer due to the lag associated with delivering offers through standard postal mail. There is thus a need for systems and methods to provide offers for products and services based on previously collected customer data.